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Date: Tue, 8 Jan 2008 17:47:14 +0100
From: Simon Kitching <simon.kitching@chello.at>
To: Jakarta Commons Developers List <dev@commons.apache.org>
Subject: Re: [VOTE] Release commons-parent 7
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---- Niall Pemberton <niall.pemberton@gmail.com> schrieb:
> On Jan 8, 2008 4:11 PM, Henri Yandell <flamefew@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > Does the current parent pom deal with adding NOTICE.txt and
> > > > LICENSE.txt to the javadoc jar files?
> > >
> > > No - but AIUI it doesn't need to since it only contains the generated
> > > javadoc and not anything we develop.
> >
> > Javadoc is full of copyright - that's why it's the part of spec jars
> 
> Yes and we have our copyright notice on every page.
> 
> > we can't replicate. Just because it's a secondary artifact doesn't
> > change that - so I bet we should have the files in the javadoc jars.
> 
> Well it just seems like rule-making gone mad and I bet if you went
> looking thru' all the m2 generated javadoc jars in the ASF distro dirs
> then none would have it.

I would not personally veto a release due to this. However I do think we should have it there. The issue is not asserting our copyright (that is pretty obvious). It is assuring users that they are entitled to redistribute the files.

*Because* the files are copyrighted, nobody is permitted to redistribute them *unless* a license explicitly grants them the right to do so. In theory, the developers at acme.example cannot ship the javadoc jars to their customers unless they can prove to the company lawyers that they have a license to do so. Pointing at a LICENSE.txt embedded in the jarfile is easy for them to do. Otherwise they would have to argue that the files are (a) ALL copyright ASF, and (b) that the ASF always licenses ALL its artifacts under the APL. I'm not sure that proving either of a or b would be easy.

In practice, of course, few developers *tell* the company lawyers about this, and the ASF never sues so things tick over fine even though there is *legally* a problem.

Regards,

Simon

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